VLC media player is a powerful player but there are still some files that may encounter failures during playback on VLC such as AVI. Hence, rumors like "VLC won’t play AVI" travels fast and people may natively turn to other media players for smooth playback of AVI files on VLC. Hold on! If you are one of them, you may feel lucky to read this article because we will recommend some solutions to enable you to play AVI files on VLC. In the end, we will give you the alternative to play AVI on VLC as well as other best-known media player. Read on to find them out!

Part 1: Why VLC Can’t Play AVI Files

You must be awfully interested to learn why on the earth that VLC cannot play AVI files natively. The answer is AVI codec. You may already come across with messages saying that VLC cannot play the AVI file as the codec was not correct. This is because VLC is not compatible with the AVI codec that is used to compress the file.

Investigating from the root cause, AVI, short for aka Audio Video Interlaced, is a very old container format created by Microsoft in 1992. This means an AVI file contains audio and video data streams that can be played together in sync. It matters because the format for the audio or video stream can be different inside the AVI container. For instance, the video stream could be compressed using the DivX, Xvid, H.264, VP9 or MPEG-4 codec. There comes the problem. If an AVI file contains a video stream that uses a more modern codec for compression, VLC may not be able to play it because it can’t decompress that particular codec as a consequence.

But there is no need for too much worry. We have solutions to how to open AVI files in VLC media player and will let you still be able to stream AVI files on VLC or other media player.

Part 2: Download AVI Codec onto VLC

The most simple and effortless way to rectify this is to download and install the AVI codec to the VLC to make it "complete". You just need to add the missing AVI codec to the VLC and it will play AVI naturally then.

Generally speaking, if an AVI file contains a VLC incompatible video codec, it will fail to play in VLC. In this case, you can search and download the correspondent codec to make the VLC compatible with AVI and avert any errors that may stop VLC playing AVI.

When it comes to VLC AVI codec download, there are many free codec packs available on the internet and you may simply download and install it to your VLC.

Part 3: Convert AVI Files to VLC-compatible Format

The highlight of this article is to offer better alternatives for you to play AVI on VLC, with which you will be able to stream any AVI as well as other files on VLC smoothly. Well, the best among these alternatives is to convert AVI to VLC-compatible format. Leawo Video Converter is such an almighty program that is developed to convert videos from one format to another. It supports more than 180 formats, covering almost every existing format in the world, including MP4, AVI, MOV, MKV, MTS, FLV, etc. It is more than a video converter but also a video player and editor as it provides so many practical features for users to customize their video, for example, crop or trim the video, add effects to the video, remove or add watermark, and so on. Armed by powerful media processing technology, this video converter is able to process files at 6x higher speed than its rivals in the same category while retaining 100% quality as original files, which by the way, means 1:1 quality is reserved after file conversion. Many more advanced features are waiting for you to discover.

Anyway, this program is super easy to get hold of so I will give a brief guide to you in the following part.

Step 1: Download and install the video converter.Click the button below to download and install the program to your PC.

Step 2: Add source AVI files to the program.Click Add Video to load the source AVI files to the converter. You may load a bunch of files at a time.

Step 3: Change the output format. Click Change from the format dropdown menu, where you will be led to a Profile pane.

Step 4: Locate the target output format from the Profile pane. Select the target format by searching keywords from the quick search bar or directly moving your cursor to the right format.

Step 5: Edit the video. This step is optional. If you want to adjust the video before file conversion, click on the Edit button from the format dropdown menu. Here you will be able to perform many editing tasks within clicks.

Step 6: Set the directory to save the output file and convert the AVI file to VLC compatible format. Click on the big green button Convert from the toolbar and set the directory to save the output format on the displayed window. After that, hit on the round button Convert to start processing the AVI files.

Now that you have VLC compatible files, you can freely stream them on your VLC without worrying about how to play AVI files on VLC.

Part 4: Another Powerful AVI Player – Leawo Blu-ray Player

Another even simpler way to settle how to play AVI files is using Leawo Blu-ray Player, a freeware capable of streaming any file effortlessly. VLC won’t play AVI natively but Leawo Blu-ray Player does. This freeware comes as a 6-in-1 program suite that acts not only as a free DVD disc player, but also a free DVD player to play back DVD folder and DVD ISO image file. It can handle Blu-ray, DVD, 4K, and even UHD videos files hassle free.

It features a lot of tempting customization functions such as skin change, playback options, subtitle, aspect ratio, contrast and so on and so forth. Together with modern media technology, it can help users bypass region codes or copyright protection and allow them to stream any region files smoothly.
This player is easy to run to play your AVI files. Check it out here.

Step 1: Download and install the player. Click the button below to install the player. Install the player after installation.

Step 2: Load original files to the player. Click Open File to load the AVI files to the player.

Step 3: Set the playback options. Click on the editing icon to enter the settings page, where you are able to set playback options accordingly.

Step 4: Play AVI files on the player. Now that you have your AVI files loaded to the player and set ready the playback options, click on the target file from the playlist on the right pane to start playing AVI files.

Part 5: Conclusion

In this article, we have introduced three solutions for you to handle how to play AVI files on VLC. When you get the error message indicating that your VLC fails to open AVI, it is due to the lack of AVI codec. You can stay calm and try downloading the AVI codec to the VLC and play the AVI files on VLC again. If this solution cannot work out for you, I suggest you consider to convert the AVI files to VLC compatible format, which turns out to be much easier than installing codec especially when you have no idea where and how to install the codec. Leawo Video Converter will be a good choice here to convert AVI files to VLC compatible format. This video converter supports more than180 video/audio formats, covering almost all popular formats in the world. It comes within the Leawo Prof Media program suite, including every piece of necessary video processing software. It is amazing to use this video converter to convert AVI to VLC compatible format within just a few clicks. By the way, you can pre-process the file before it is converted to the VLC compatible format within this program.

If you don’t even bother to convert AVI videos to another format when you have too many AVI movies, try Leawo Blu-ray Player instead of VLC. Leawo Blu-ray Player, a free Blu-ray player that will help you stream any file smoothly. You simply drop the files to it and it will play immediately. In addition, it offers so many fun features to let users customize their playback experience by adjusting playback options within clicks. For users keen on different stylish play skin, they will feel excited to meet this player. All the intuitive features and user interface makes users enjoy this player more.